Trouble in the House: is a bitter class divide fuelling David Cameron's dislike of Commons Speaker John Bercow?

The simmering dislike between the prime minister and the Speaker of the House spilled out into the open after an angry exchange during PMQs. Social status as well as politics is creating an increasingly incendiary feud

The Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, is admired by some MPs for his refreshing approach but hated by others for being an upstart. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

Labour frontbenchers were in exceptionally good spirits as they emerged from prime minister's questions on Wednesday. They had just witnessed something that for them has been all too rare over the past year – the sight of David Cameron fuming. "Flashman was back," said one shadow minister. "I have never seen him so angry."

Labour's mood would have been even more upbeat had their own leader been the cause of Cameron's irritation. But he had been only a minor part of the problem. The real cause was Cameron's fellow Tory who chairs debates in a supposedly neutral way from the big seat to his left – the Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow.

During PMQs, the prime minister had been in midflow, counter-attacking against Ed Miliband over the NHS, when Bercow cut him down with biting sarcasm. "We are very grateful," said Bercow from the chair. "I call Guto Bebb," (Conservative MP for Aberconwy). Cameron flashed the Speaker a look that one Labour member described afterwards as one of "sheer hatred". Later in the session, Bercow did it again, seeming to reprimand Cameron for going on too long and insisting that the occasion was not for party leaders to sound off but for ordinary MPs to raise their concerns. "Order. Prime minister's questions is principally for backbenchers," he said incongruously. Cameron left the chamber without so much as a glance in the Speaker's direction, ignoring the customary courtesy of a nod.

Cameron's dislike of Bercow, and Bercow's of Cameron, goes back a long way. The rivalry, friends say, has much to do with their very different backgrounds. Bercow thinks of himself to this day as a self-made Tory who has earned the right to be in a position of power, and of Cameron as the product of privilege from a class that believes itself born to rule. Bercow's father drove minicabs for a living and he went to Finchley Manorhill comprehensive school in north London and then on to Essex University.

Cameron, by contrast, was born into an upper-middle-class family, his dad was a stockbroker, and he took the classic route of Eton, Oxford and then the Tory party. Bercow's political grounding was in the boisterous, jean-wearing Thatcherite Federation of Conservative Students, of which he became national chairman. Its often aggressive and confrontational style was as far removed from Cameron's life mixing with upper-class Tories in the Bullingdon Club as it was possible to be.

With the pair now occupying two of the highest offices in the land, tensions that go back years are becoming ever more public. Relations already bordered on the irreparable by the time Cameron stood for the Tory leadership in 2005. At the general election that year Bercow, the MP for Buckingham, dismissed his own party's election manifesto, which Cameron had been instrumental in drawing up, as "embarrassingly thin" and the party's immigration policy as "repellent". But it was later in that year, when Cameron had joined the race to succeed Michael Howard, that Bercow took things to new levels. "In the modern world, the combination of Eton, hunting, shooting and lunch at [the exclusive club] White's is not helpful when you are trying to appeal to millions of ordinary people," Bercow said of Cameron's suitability to lead the party.

When Cameron subsequently won Bercow was, unsurprisingly, not top of the new leader's list for preferment. He had blown his chance of occupying a top post in the party or in a Cameron-led government.

But Bercow was not giving up. When the speakership became vacant in 2009 after Labour's Michael Martin was ousted in a coup, he decided to run against Cameron's preferred candidate, the bicycling baronet and Old Etonian Sir George Young.

Many Labour MPs, aware it was the Tories' turn to have the job, voted for Bercow who had long since abandoned his right-wing Monday Club views, married a Labour supporter, and seemed to be veering further and further left.

With Bercow now well established – some MPs believe the tension between Cameron and the state school-educated Bercow merely adds to the drama and appeal of question time and Commons debates. Instead of it being a two-way contest between government and opposition, the dynamic is increasingly three-way, with the Speaker in the triangle of heated combat. "The referee is now part of the match," said a Tory MP.

Many Labour MPs and even some Tories find him refreshing and say he has reduced the stuffiness of the Commons and brought entertainment and personality into its all too often arcane procedures. He is also popular in his constituency. Ken Clarke, one of the least stuffy Tories, is a firm supporter. "I rather like John," he says. "He is doing a good job."

But there is a depth of animosity against him in the Tory party that is becoming politically, and potentially constitutionally, significant. Cameron's irritation with him last week will have fuelled that. It is not only that many Conservatives feel he is too sympathetic to Labour. It is also that they can't stand his mix of bumptiousness and headmasterly pomposity. His endless demands to MPs to be quiet and behave grate as those same MPs recall only too well how when Bercow was on the backbenches he was the noisiest of the lot. He earned the nickname "Boing" because he would bounce to his feet so much. "He is not thinking about the traditions and functioning of the Commons. It is about him. Bercow is simply ghastly," said one minister in a Westminster restaurant, before describing him with a four-letter word.

There is endless, growing talk among Tories of plots to remove him. In the next few weeks the all-party Commons procedure committee will issue a report that could lead to changes in the way senior officials are elected and re-elected, including the Speaker. It is expected that the report will float the idea that the Speaker should have to be re-elected in a secret ballot at the start of every parliament. This would give Tories a chance to oust Bercow after the next election without risking their careers. At present, MPs can oppose the Speaker's reappointment and trigger a vote but a record of how they voted is made public. Greg Knight, the chair of the procedure committee, who insisted he liked Bercow, said the report was likely to lead to a Commons debate later this year in which MPs would discuss the issues in the chamber.

Bercow's cause among more traditional Tory MPs has not been helped by the behaviour of his wife Sally, an inveterate tweeter who loves to attack coalition policy at every turn. To what extent, MPs ask, is she influencing him and his decisions in the chamber?

"There are serious issues here," says another Tory. "The Speaker is supposed to be thoroughly neutral and a force for stability and continuity but that is not how many on our side of the House see it. Most of us think that Bercow is just a chippy wanker and a serial trouble-causer and self-publicist."

But Bercow has never conformed to the norms of political behaviour. Under Iain Duncan Smith's leadership, he said the party's chances of winning an election were "about as great as finding an Eskimo in the desert". When Michael Howard was in charge, he caused outrage among Tories by writing to Tony Blair in 2004 praising his leadership on Iraq. "On this subject as on many other foreign affairs issues, you have provided outstanding statesmanship," Bercow wrote. Howard sacked him, prompting Bercow to call Howard a control freak who showed sinister tendencies. Since becoming an MP in 1997, he has acquired an enmity in the Tory party unmatched by anyone else in parliament.

A biography of Bercow by the BBC journalist Bobby Friedman attributes his ambition and desire to get one over the likes of Cameron, in part, to the fact that he was bullied at school. He was teased for his small stature and fear of wasps.

For the time being, however, the boy who was taunted in the playground has taken control of the school and is bossing his tormentors around. "The intriguing question," says one minister, "is whether it can last. Can he continue there for years to come or can we find a way? That is the question."